


I Know it's Not Much, But It's the Best I Can Do

by raleighpuppy



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 02:47:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2092737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raleighpuppy/pseuds/raleighpuppy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herc and Stacker try their best to have a relationship during the end of the world, but they both know one of them won't make it out alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Your Song by Ellie Goulding, which I listened to on repeat while I wrote this.

     Neither one of them expects it to happen. They meet in Afghanistan and Herc has a little boy and a wife, and he talks about them so warmly. Stacker knows he loves them very much, but he can't help but starting to love the ginger Aussie too. They say goodbye when Herc leaves- he's going home first- and promise to keep in touch, but Stacker doesn't see his friend face-to-face again until 2014, when Herc's got a dead wife and a little boy who hates him and he crumbles under the weight of everything. Stacker persuades him to stick around, persuades him to join the PPDC.

     Stacker checks on him frequently during their time at the Academy to make sure his friend's feeling well. He's not eating much and he doesn't talk to anyone, not even Scott, out of their classes, and Stacker overhears one of their overseers threatening to just let Herc go, to kick him out, if he doesn't shape up soon, but Stacker somehow persuades him to talk. And then he breaks because his little boy- Stacker learns his name is Charlie- hates him for not being able to save his mum. Stacker ends up telling him about Luna. It feels a little better to let someone know exactly how much everything hurts and why.

     Stacker's not too sure when exactly it starts, but it starts before the beginning of the end of the Jaeger Program, it starts before Scott leaves. And he isn't exactly sure what he's doing and he knows Herc isn't exactly sure what he's doing either, but they both let it happen. They let themselves kiss and they tell the other they're going to be okay. If the world ended and they both died in that moment, it would have been fine because the last words they would have heard would be reassurances they'd be okay. It would have been a peaceful way to go.

    But neither one of them was made to go peacefully, so that's not how it ends. Hercules Hansen and Stacker Pentecost don't get a happy ending. They were never meant to get one and they both know it. But that doesn't mean they don't make the best out of what they have. A secret relationship in the middle of a war when they both have very important positions is very quick and isn't much. Neither one has much to offer the other, but it's the best they can do.

     Herc keeps it a secret even in the drift. Scott never catches a glimpse of Stacker and never detects anything between them, mainly because Herc's good at controlling his thoughts, but partially because Scott just doesn't care about what's turned Herc's mood around. Scott's never really cared about Herc. Chuck never learns either, not until he drifts with Stacker at the very end and curses himself for being so stupid, for not noticing what they had. Mako never learns. They're very good at keeping secrets.

     Looking back on it, thinking of how happy he'd been then- and he hadn't been happy for a very long time since, not even as he watched Max waddle around- Herc wishes they'd told, or at least not been quite as secretive about it all. But it's too late to go back and fix a relationship when one of them is dead. It hurts a lot to think about. It hurts so much. Chuck and Angela and Stacker and all the others Rangers is too many dead people for one person to be haunted by. Herc's never thought of himself as being particularly good at dealing with ghosts.

     A couple weeks before Pitfall, they lay together and Herc knew the end was coming, that in a couple weeks, when it was time, one of them wouldn't come back. That's a thought Herc didn't want to think about because it makes him think of Angela and all the other ghosts and thinking of them makes him feel sick and shaky, like he should have been able to prevent this all somehow. He could have been able to do something. He should have been able to do something. But he didn't and it's far too late.

     Stacker catches onto the fact Herc's shaking and holds him close and they just lay there in silence with the lights off, and it's so quiet and peaceful, a rare find in the final weeks of a war. Herc closes his eyes and Stacker wishes it could stay like this forever, but knows that's impossible. Even if it's short, he'll take what he can find. Even if it's only a few more minutes, he'd take them and cherish those few more minutes forever.

     Herc breaks his arm and he's absolutely furious. He's shaking and won't calm down, and Chuck's aggravated too, which is only making it worse because they're both feeding off each other's anger. Stacker doesn't know what to do. Well, he knows what he can and should do, but he knows Herc won't accept it, which is why he tells Herc as his commanding officer, not the person closest to him.

"I'm going to pilot with Chuck."

     He's angry of course, but he has to give in because Stacker's his commanding officer and it's the end of the world. Everyone, especially the Rangers piloting the jaegers, have to sacrifice something, but Stacker's not a something; he's a person, a very important person. Herc was done sacrificing people, a fact he let Stacker know with teary eyes, and Stacker's eyes ended up teary too because he hated seeing Herc this way.

     They spent their last night lying together in near silence. Neither one got any sleep, but spent the entire night awake whispering to each other. Stacker pulled Herc close and thought about how much he'd miss him. And Herc rested his head on Stacker's chest and angrily thought about how he was so tired. When it's time, Herc helps Stacker into his drivesuit and Stacker points out how they make quite the pair; a couple old men, one with a broken arm and the other going to his death. And Herc wants to punch him for it, but can't. He'd never do that.

     Herc knows Stacker and Chuck are talking in the hallway, but he doesn't walk up with Max until later in the conversation, and the first thing he hears is Stacker telling his son "You're an egotistical jerk with daddy issues, a simple puzzle I solved on day one", which stops him in his tracks.

Stacker adds the highest compliment he can think of. "But you are your father's son, so we'll drift just fine."

"Works for me," Chuck replies.

     As Stacker walks into the elevator and Chuck walks up to him, Herc feels his throat begin to close up and he begins to say things he's regretted never saying.

"Hey, now. When you drift with someone, you feel like there's nothing to talk about. I just don't want to regret all the things that I've never said out loud," he began.

     Chuck looks like he's going to start crying, which makes Herc realize he's still a kid. He's twenty-one years old and he's going to die and he's just a little kid.  
  
"Dad...you don't need to. I know them all. I always have," Chuck croaks.

     Max barks, interrupting their emotional exchange. Chuck bends down to pet Max, who's as much a part of their family as the two of them are. He squishes Max's, and then places a kiss on the bulldog's head.

"Hey, handsome. Oh, I'm gonna miss you," he whispers to the dog. He stands up and looks his dad in the eyes. "You look after him for me."

     Chuck then walks towards Pentecost, leaving his dad behind with the dog. And then Herc realizes his eyes are watery and that Chuck's are too. He's being left behind again and he's sending a kid to die in what should be his place. Herc should be the one to die.

"Stacker! That's my son you got there, my son!"

     Before the elevator doors close, Chuck looks back at his dad with very red, watery eyes. As soon as their out of his sight, Herc heads up to LOCCENT with Max to direct the mission he doesn't want to happen, the mission he should be running and dying on, not Stacker or Chuck. He watches it all happen up in LOCCENT. He watches the damage be done to Gipsy and Striker, and watches as Striker gets destroyed and feels absolutely useless because he can't do a thing. He hears their last words.

"We can clear a path for the lady," Stacker says.

"Well, my father always said...he said if you have a shot, you take it. So let's do this!" Chuck replies, which feels like stabbing in Herc's chest. "It was a pleasure, sir."

      And the rest is a blur to Herc because he knows it's over. He knows they're both dead and Max knows something's wrong because he starts whining and whining. Herc doesn't celebrate with the others because he has nothing to celebrate. Yes, the world's been saved, but there's nothing left for him in it anymore. So he leaves. In the morning, Herc and Max are gone. First, he goes back to Sydney, but decides to leave when he sees a house he think Chuck and Stacker would be like. It's too much, so he drops off the grid, and no matter how hard Mako and Raleigh and Tendo try, they can never find Herc.

He's gone.


	2. Chapter 2

     Angela had always wanted to travel and Herc had always wanted to do the traveling with her. They talked about it sometimes after putting little Charlie to bed, how they'd go from city to city after Charlie leaves the house and they're both retired. They'd be old and visit all the spots people talked about visiting before they died. But that didn't happen because Angela died in 2014 and there was no Charlie, who later became Chuck, anymore, so Herc takes Max the bulldog and goes on the trip to all the cities Angela wanted to visit together in their old age.

     It's terribly lonely, he realizes, to travel with just a dog. He finds himself talking to Max no matter where they are, even in public places such as plazas and on trains. The entire time he has a piece of paper in his pocket from when Mako wrote down the address of the house she and Raleigh would be living in for him and made it extremely clear she wanted to hear from him, she wanted to know if he's okay. The paper feels heavy in his pocket and he doesn't want it, but he keeps it because it makes him feel a bit less alone.

     Rome is first and he can't help but thinking that Angela would absolutely love it. She'd always loved history and ruins. She always thought ruins were fun and when they were a lot younger, in high school, she'd drag him out to some old abandoned buildings and dare him to go inside with her. He was terrified, but he'd always go in eventually. He blinks and brings himself back to the present, when he's standing with Max, who's drooling and panting, and staring up at the ruins of the Colosseum, dark and tall and looming over him.

     He decides to start reading again, like he used to do a lot before the war. He has always been a reader, reading book after book after book, but the Kaiju War left no time for that anymore. He starts with the classics first, the books he was forced to read in high school. He starts with the books he and Stacker sometimes talked about in the Academy when there was literally nothing else to talk about, and it feels like his heart's being ripped out of his chest with each page, but he doesn't stop reading them. He also turns to showering Max with more affection than before, and most nights he remembers to feed Max and not himself.

     When he finishes a book, he leaves it on the train and hopes someone else finds it and likes it. By the third city, he starts leaving little notes in the books for the next reader. In a copy of _Fahrenheit-451_ by Ray Bradbury he leaves on a train in Paris, he leaves a note and it reads:

_I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did and please leave it somewhere for someone else to find. Thank you._

     All of his notes are somewhat along those lines. Short and to the point. He honestly hopes the people that pick up his books leave them wherever they finish them for someone else to pick up. It's a nice idea. Stacker would have loved it, he hoped, but Chuck probably would have laughed at him. Angela would have liked it too. She would have called it a "fun" idea. When these thoughts get to him, about what Stacker and Angela and Chuck would think of all of this, it's usually late, very late, at night and he should be sleeping, but all he does is pull Max up onto the bed with him and cry. 

     As the cities go by, it doesn't hurt any less. It doesn't hurt any more, though. He sort of becomes used to it and feels numb, but he doesn't know if that's worse or not. He spoils Max more than he ever did before and the slobbery bulldog is given lots of treats and rubs and pets, but he's still sad. Max knows Chuck is gone. Really, Herc just wants the dog to be happy, and he knows it's sad that's become his goal.

     In Barcelona, he finds a book he thinks Mako would like, so he contacts her for the first time since he left. He hasn't talked to anyone from the PPDC since leaving because it's too raw and it's his fault Stacker is dead. He feels like a murderer and he doesn't want to face Mako ever again because he killed Stacker. It still feels too early to contact Mako, but he does it anyway because he wants her to read this book. He doesn't know it, but Mako cries when she finds the package in the mailbox because it means he's still alive.

       Sometime in the next couple years, Max gets very, very sick. When he left for the trip, he thought of Max dying, of course, but never thought it would actually happen. So, he feels like he too is going to die when he's told by a vet in Berlin that they're going to have to put Max down because he's too sick and too old for this. He's petting Max and telling him he's such a good dog when they give him the shot and he licks Herc's hand for the last time. He doesn't know if he's crying when he leaves, but he figures he must be from the worried looks people are giving him. It's not fair, he thinks, that he's made it this far. 

      Getting up in the mornings and eating and basically living in general become more of a chore without Max there too. Even in his old age the bulldog was nice to have around, even though he was both painful to see and a cause for joy. He stops reading for a month after Max's death and stops sending books to Mako. The thoughts about how he should have been the one to die during Pitfall instead of Stacker and/or Chuck and the thoughts about how he should have died instead of Angela start coming back.

     He knows he's not young anymore. He knows he doesn't look like how he used to. No one recognizes him as Hercules Hansen. He's thinner and grayer and more tired and hunches over a bit and folds himself up so he takes up as little space as possible. He doesn't want to be noticed. He also has a myriad of fake names, all less ridiculous than Hercules, that he uses on the rare occasion that he's asked for his name.

     The cities Angela wanted to see start becoming more and more painful the more of them he sees because he can't stop picturing what he and Angela talked about. He also misses Stacker greatly because he knows he would have enjoyed this (as in traveling, not feeling absolutely alone and like a murderer) too and he can't help but thinking it's his fault Stacker died. It hits him hard at night when Max is no longer there to cheer him up. One day, it hits him hard in a public square and he starts shaking and crying, but everyone keeps walking by because _don't talk to that strange man!_ and it hurts because even the bulldog has left. He's entirely alone.

     Sometimes it gets very bad, especially at night when it's dark and his thoughts can get to them and there's no one else there and it's all too much until he finally decides to call Tendo, who gave him his phone number all those years ago when the PPDC disbanded.

"Hello?" he groggy voice asks. "Who's this?"

"Tendo, I..." Herc begins and he knows his voice sounds awful because he's been crying.

"Herc?" Tendo asks. "Is that you? Oh my god, we thought you were dead. Mako's been so worried. Where are you? Are you okay?"

"I...I think I'm in Sweden," Herc answers. "I don't know. Countries in Europe kinda blend together. I don't know where the borders are."

"Answer the second question. Are you okay?"

Herc sits in silence for a couple minutes before answering. "I don't really know. Sometimes I think I am, but I don't think so right now."

"What's wrong?"

"Tendo, I'm responsible for the deaths of Angela, Stacker, and Chuck, I'm reading books Stacker would have liked, Max is dead, and I've been on a multiple year long trip I planned with my dead wife. What isn't wrong?"

     Tendo sits up in bed, suddenly much more worried than he was before and disturbing Alison, who grumbles in her sleep and asks him who the hell he's on the phone with at this hour. He very quietly and very quickly explains, and then gets back on the phone with Herc.

"Are you alone? Don't you dare do anything, I swear to god, Herc. Listen to me. Please say something so I know you're still there."

"'m still here."

     Tendo could hear how his breathing is rapid and gasping and he could guess that Herc's probably shaking as he holds the phone in his hands in a hotel room in the dark somewhere in Europe all alone.

"Is there...is there anyone you could talk to?" Tendo asks. "List all the people you're in contact with, please."

"You and Mako," Herc answers and he suddenly feels even worse because that's such a pathetic list. "I haven't sent a book to Mako in a long time, though. I've stopped reading and leaving books on trains. Why'd I stop doing that? I liked that a lot."

"Hey, hey, don't get more upset. You can get yourself a new book in the morning, okay?" Tendo tries to reassure him. "You can do that again. It's always an option." He takes a deep breath before speaking again. "You didn't kill anyone, okay? I understand why you think that, I really do. It makes sense, but you didn't. There was nothing you could have done to change any of it, and I think that's the bit you don't like, the fact it was something more than you."

     Herc and Tendo talk for a long time. They talk until Herc forgets what he was planning on doing to himself that night and forgets why there was a handgun- the one he bought a long time ago for a reason he doesn't remember anymore but for some reason kept- lying on the ground. He puts it away before he goes to buy himself another book to read. Again, he picks out something he thinks Stacker would have liked, and then he packs his few things for the next city.

     In Brussels, he falls ill, very ill, because he doesn't take good care of himself anymore and it's cold and, let's face it, he's not as young as he used to be. He's not made for this kind of constant traveling. He'd admitted into a hospital when he collapses at a train station and a bystander actually has the kindness in their heart to call an ambulance for him. He doesn't quite understand what happens at the hospital because he's still groggy, but he hears the word "tumor" a lot. He asks if he can call someone and the doctor says yes. He thinks it's most likely out of pity for the sad scruffy man who collapsed at a train station.

"Herc, why didn't you send another book until last week?" she quietly asks. "I was very worried about you."

"I hadn't felt up to reading anything for a really long time," Herc answers. "I'm sorry. I should have at least written you. I wasn't doing too well."

"How are you now?"

"'m in a hospital in Brussels, I think. I collapsed at a train station, apparently."

     Mako sits in silence for a couple minutes as Raleigh curiously watches her and mouths "who is it?" from the doorway. She quietly explains who it is and what's happening, and Raleigh suddenly looks very sad. Mako bites her lower lip, a habit of hers when she's nervous.

"How are you feeling right now? Any pains? Are you sick?" she asks.

"'m just sore. I think fell funny on one of my legs," he answers. "I've had a headache for the past couple days, though. I mainly called to apologize for not writing or sending any books. Sorry to have worried you, Miss Mori."

"You can call me Mako."

"Sorry to have worried you, Mako."

      That's the last time Mako hears from Herc because he's gone for good in a couple weeks. In the middle of the night, they receive a phone call and Mako answers it because she's always quicker to speak coherent sentences after waking up. Raleigh sits up and watches her.

"Yes?" Mako asks.

     Raleigh hears some speaking on the other end, but can't make out any of it, and then Mako's face falls and she looks like she's about to cry, so he grabs her and pulls her close as she talks on the phone. Somehow near the middle of the conversation, she begins to cry and Raleigh begins to rub circles on her back. Finally, after what feels like forever, she puts down the phone and leans against him.

"Herc's dead," she begins. "The headache he mentioned was caused by a tumor they caught too late and it killed him. I was his emergency contact because there was no one else."

     Raleigh feels his heart drop in his chest and has to close his eyes for a couple minutes because he expected this, really, but didn't expect it to happen quite like this. He had hoped Herc would have lived to be old and maybe a bit happier. He hadn't expected him to collapse at a train station, and then die alone in a hospital in Brussels a couple weeks later. And he really doesn't know what to say, so Mako speaks first.

"I'm gonna miss him a lot."

     Sometimes Mako still expects to find a box containing an old tattered book sent from any various country from Herc in the mail, but it never happens again, and she has to remind herself that he's dead. She honestly hopes he's better now and she tries to cheer herself up by imagining what the Afterlife, if there is one, looks like. In that Afterlife, Herc's finally happy. Herc finally gets the happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this ties it up well.   
> I've read other fics in which Herc travels after Pitfall and I've always really liked that idea, so I tried to do my own take on it, in which he does a trip he and Angela were supposed to do together alone.   
> When I was writing this, I made myself cry because I'm a big baby.

**Author's Note:**

> The sad thing about Stacker and Herc is that had one of them not died, they might have had something great. And had Chuck not died, maybe he and his dad could have fixed their relationship. But nothing ended well for Herc, did it?


End file.
